Folks, I have been studying and collecting data on ON personal names
on and off for several years. There are, of course, many books on
the topic, one of the best being Norderlendske Fyrenamn by Eivind
Vågslid (although I disagree with many of his interpretations, as he
denies that ON folk ever had a different religion than Christianity,
and thus explains the name Freydís as 'fertile woman, wanting many
offspring'). No population-census was taken in any Scandinavian
country prior to Christianization, the Black Death, the reformation,
etc., and modern populations use of some surviving ON names presents
a very distorted picture, as some are now far more common than they
are thought to have been in ON times, while others have died out
completely (or nearly so) or been re-interpreted; additionally, a
great many non-ON names have been adapted, and pseudo-ON names have
been created out of ON elements found in inherited names, etc..
Let's take a look at a compound-name group beginning in the letter f
and see what happens. Using only runic insciptional evidence, we get:
friþsteinn could be dubious, as it is the name of a priest from
Eidsberg (Norway 1316), but nothing speaks against it formally;
friþbergr is also possible (Knap Frebergsson, farmer in Fyn, Denmark
1472); additionally, we get some dubious ones: *friþmaþr (fridmann,
Dalarna Sweden 1439-40, likely < German), friþrekr (widely attested
in old sources, but never of a pre-Christian ON person, although the
name is old Germanic), friþþiófr (dubious despite the saga Friðþiófs
Saga Hins Froekna, not occuring elsewhere). Here are some Modern
Icelandic, post-reformation constructions:
10 ON names. This was clearly not one of the most popular compound
name categories in ON, despite modern trends to the contrary. Still,
there are clearly some ON names here. Given that masculine ON names
in -laugr and -leifr have corresponding feminines in -laug and -leif
(see other attested categories), that the ON feminines in -laug are
much more common than the masculine ones, and that feminine names
are not as well attested, we can safely reconstruct two feminines
which must have existed: friþlaug and friþleif. However, trying to
further reconstruct this name category is hard. Playing it safe, I
might propose friþgarþr (femin. in -gerþr have corresponding masc.
in -garþr, for a possible total of 13 ON names. Friþi is just the
short-name for any masculine name in friþ-, while the corresponding
feminine is *friþa.
Next, lets look at some more categories beginning with the letter f.